Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Review: Beyond the Grave by Mara Purnhagen

Beyond the Grave (Past Midnight #3) takes place four months after the end of One Hundred Candles (Past Midnight # 2) and thus, I would highly recommend reading that book first before continuing this series.

Four Months ago, Charlotte Silver swore off paranormal investigations after her mother Karen was attacked by the Watcher and put in a coma. Her father basically lives in Karen’s hospital room, and has given up any attempts at continuing his life long work while having to deal with frivolous lawsuits for which he knows nothing about.

Four months of dealing with scarred hands after Charlotte herself was successful in temporarily stopping the Watcher from killing her entire family in order to get to her. She has since graduated from High School and now her best friends Jared and Avery are going off at college in Ohio while Charlotte worries what will happen if her mother doesn’t show remarkable improvement within the next several months.

Charlotte has been experiencing intense panic attacks to the point where she can’t do much of anything let alone worrying about doing any investigations with Shane. The panic attacks are caused by loud and sudden noises which pretty much debilitate Charlotte. Luckily, she finds comfort and help in the most unusual of places.

Charlotte has since put her college plans on hold to study at a local community college where she understandably is shocked to learn that her nemesis Bliss Reynolds goes there as well. Bliss has always been a question mark as far as a character is concerned. We really don’t know much about her, but with the release of Beyond the Grave, she plays an even bigger role in the series as well as helping Charlotte out with her attacks and worries.

The one positive in her life, Noah, has his own issues to work out. Even though he claims to be fine, and he won’t do anything to hurt Charlotte or make her cry; he ends up crushing Charlotte when she learns he has been lying to her and doing his own paranormal investigations while skipping out on school.

Charlotte soon realizes that he may end up being the Watchers next unwilling carrier and she needs to find a way to reach out and find help before it’s too late.

Added to the series is Michael a so called protector and the brother of Marcus, the person Charlotte ended up killing in order to stop the Watcher from killing her family. *See the previous reference book for more information.

The story ends up revolving around the pending nuptials between Shane and Trisha who is Noah’s mother as well as the discovery that there’s more to Bliss than meets the eye.

Overall, this was a pretty decent read for me. I like Charlotte and continue to appreciate the fact that although this is a YA novel, there are no 3-way love triangles or extreme teenaged angst.

The ending is heart wrenching and wonderful for which I shall not spoil. If you like paranormal ghost stories, read this series from the start.

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Hi, I'm Shelley, an avid book reader from Florida by way of New York. I read and review books of MOST GENRE's for my own personal gratification and don't mind if people disagree with my assessment as long as they respect me.
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